I would not apply to YC if I knew in advance YC was a DNC fundraising organization. (I'd be even more angry if it were an RNC fundraising organization.) I'd even be pissed if it were a Libertarian Party fundraising organization, even if I might donate to them myself.
Shark jumping doesn't even begin to address this. This is a new class of fuckup -- "when YC became a political party fundraiser" is the new shark-jump.
They're not a "DNC fundraising organization". They're a business that happens to be run by someone who currently supports the DNC, and is making an in-kind contribution of the use of their office space for an event.
YC is a private business. Their management is entitled to participate in the political process in any way they choose. If YC's voting interest is OK with an in-kind contribution, that's their right too.
The idea that you'd find this kind of thing shocking is a little surprising, since it's very much the norm across all political parties.
If you'd like to pivot to a discussion of libertarian politics, I'd observe that there are companies that not only play host to libertarian political activist organizations, but also directly and aggressively lobby in favor of their favored policy objectives.
Why is it that every discussion like this has to have somebody pointing out that "that's their right" to do whatever thing is being discussed? Do you really think that is being disputed?
To pull from last Friday's xkcd, it's really the ultimate concession in an argument: you're saying that the most compelling thing you can say about this activity is that it's not literally illegal.
Companies lobby for their own policy interests all the time -- even if they dislike the politicians or political parties. I could totally see someone in the oil industry lobbying R for Keystone XL even if they hate everything else about the party.
I'm against YC being explicitly R, D, or L (or C, or G, or whatever), as it's 1) different than a normal company 2) a company I have a somewhat closer tie to than as a customer, but less close than a place I work for or own.
Say as the outcome of Sam/YC getting involved in this fundraiser, nothing happens other than some progress on a founder visa, ip reform and (hopefully) a stinging question or two about surveillance/privacy issues.
Wouldn't that be good?
I think that's quite likely the worst scenario. I can't imagine the reverse happening, that being in a room with Obama turn Sam and YC into toeing the Democratic party-line.
The strange concoction of libertarianism, progressivism and contrarianism that you see in YC, HN and even generally in silicon valley will remain. Because that's who we all are.
Party politics are actually what's holding up Founder Visas right now -- Craig Montuori is probably the smartest person working on this (IMO), and the basic calculus seems to be ~everyone is pro-FV, but everyone also believes only a single bill can pass, and thus everyone must get his own particular issue added to it. The stumbling block is not the farmworker visa, or the afghan/iraqi translator visas, but the huge "citizenship for people already present in the country without documentation" issue, which is inherently political because one party assumes all of those new citizens will vote for the other party. "We must have comprehensive immigration reform" means "all or nothing"; without that, we'd get founder visas, iraq/afghanistan visas, and farmworker visas right away, and then continued lack of action on the ~12mm people already in the country who are in limbo. So, donating to a political party on this issue actually pushes things backwards. (This is independent of whether you feel all of these things together are better or worse than some subset, or none; it's just strategy.)
(and, on the R side, it's the stupid Hastert Rule; a majority of the House supports even comprehensive immigration reform, but not a majority of the majority party. A discharge petition and immunity from retribution seems like the only solution to that.)
IP reform doesn't seem particularly partisan to me, but I don't know about the politics on that issue. It does scare me if it becomes one party's issue that the other party will oppose it just to oppose it.
Surveillance/privacy clearly crosses party lines; it's most correlated with tenure (DiFi, etc. are pro-NSA; younger D and R candidates are generally anti-NSA, with some awesome exceptions like Wyden.)
The real outcome of this will be $150-200k or so for DNC, which will presumably mostly be used on upcoming house/senate campaigns. It's a drop in the bucket with superpacs, but fewer strings attached to it.
So the question, in my view (as someone who probably agrees with you on most political things), is what is especially different now that Sam is co-hosting this at YC.
In terms of strategy, given that you have goals X, Y and Z, what's the best way to accomplish them? I've been a (l)ibertarian as long as I can remember, and while I have succeeded in changing the minds of some "mainstream" friends on particular issues, the unfortunate fact is the ideology isn't natural to most people.
We're going to have to make compromises and move all parties to support more of the things we want.
If this was an ordinary DNC fundraiser I would be more concerned, but the president is the guest of honor. I.e. there is more than money at play. Connections that can be made. Things can be done. When judges and bureaucrats are appointed, they can be people we'd like a bit more.
And if there was one person that you'd want on stage with the smallest chance to alter Obama's thinking, wouldn't it be sama?
I can’t really comment on US politics with too much internal knowledge, but from what I gathered, a lot of what YC start-ups are trying to do involves “making the world a better place” (to use what became a trope with the recent HBO series) and that involves bending the rules and needing the law to be adapted to modern conditions: understanding taxi licences when Uber is around; city planning with AirBnB; on-line gambling; airline insuring against delayed transfers when you are not flying a partner’s flight but a Chipmunk connexion, etc. Payment processing and taxing on-line commerce are probably the largest issues.
From what I gathered, raising money for is the simplest form of lobbying, and Y-Combinator feel they need that access to smooth transition from its alumni proving a business makes money to making it squarely legal. I’m not sure why the DNC rather than RNC or another party; I believe you can’t have both. It might be because it seems unlikely the RNC to win the next election either in San Francisco city-hall, or in California, or even at the Federal level.
In either case, I wouldn’t expect Y Combinator not to have appreciated the sensitivity of their decision off the bat.
YC's purpose is to advance the goals of the startups that it represents and make its investors money. Secondarily it tries to help develop the startup ecosystem regardless of whether the companies are in YC.
I don't understand why politics can't be a tool to achieving those ends. Especially when the DNC is aligned with the startup community on many of the key political issues, like founder immigration reform, that can affect all of us.
Especially when the DNC is aligned with the startup community on many of the key political issues, like founder immigration reform, that can affect all of us.
Here's a thought experiment: Republicans are also aligned with startup interests: low taxes, low corporate liability, weakened labor laws, that can affect all of us.
Maybe I'm missing something but what is YC's involvement beyond being an event space? It seems crazy to call YC a DNC fundraising organization from this invitation?
On the contrary. I think a big part of the identity of Y Combinator is a straightforward rationality that would support even more explicit support for the Democratic party. Pragmatically it would be inefficient to give resources to a third party, which leaves a choice of supporting the Democrats, supporting the Republicans, or supporting neither.
The Republicans have been actively, intentionally sabotaging the economy that sustains YC's growth for years now, since the very beginning of Obama's term. YC's success is tied to the success of the American economy in general, as well as other big-picture things that are easy to forget (like having a planet to keep a headquarters on, for example, or not having that headquarters engulfed by nuclear bombs). Republicans do stuff every day to make terrible outcomes for the country and the world more likely.
Democrats have lots of problems and make lots of mistakes. But American politics is zero-sum. Take power away from Democrats and it will be given to Republicans. We should all be doing whatever we can to prevent that from happening, while also advocating for positive changes within the democratic party.
Until the Republican party loses all real power, ceases to exist or radically changes, Y Combinator (like all American enterprises) is more at risk than it should be.
If you're skeptical that this stuff really matters, think about how different the economy, and thus the start up world, could have been if Bush had never been president, or if Obama had had bad-faith-filibuster-proof majorities throughout his terms.
Shark jumping doesn't even begin to address this. This is a new class of fuckup -- "when YC became a political party fundraiser" is the new shark-jump.